August - from the 'Year at Robie Creek' series

Originally published in the:

Greetings once again from Robie Creek. We’re moving into the height of fire season now. Rainfall patterns this spring on the heels of a dry-ish winter have left us with a lot of overgrown but abnormally dry wildfire fuel in the understory. As the hot, dry weather usual to this time of year has settled in, smoke forecasts have become again part of our daily weather report, and on very smoky days the air has a sunset-orange hue at high noon. It’s really quite beautiful, and gives us a taste of what it’ll be like for a few months if Rainier goes off or a few years if Yellowstone does. The haze does keep it a little cooler when it’s thick, and right now the major fires are fifty miles to the west and north of us, no immediate danger. This year’s fires have been largely lightning-initiated – people have, so far, been cautious – starting in clusters and running together quickly into large complexes, but wildland firefighters from the Forest Service and BLM, as well as local VFDs (please support those in your area), are doing their usual excellent job at keeping people and homes as safe as possible. Shout out to them.

On to my main topic: Recycling’s been on my mind of late, specifically of food and water ‘waste’. [Check out MyZeroWaste.com for great waste-reduction hints, tips, tricks, and inspiration.] In our house, leftover meats and other proteins are split between the dogs, cats – some of which are pre-diabetic making this especially important – hamster (the degu doesn’t like them), mealworms, slugs, and in the case of eggs or seafood, the fish. Fruits, veggies, and carbs go to the rodents, slugs, mealworms, and again, if appropriate types, the fish, as well as to the worms in the composter.

Water removed from the aquariums during water changes is first used to water indoor plants and the rest goes into the duckweed tubs or is run through the worm bin. In the duckweed tubs, nutrients are taken up by the plants and various organisms that make their homes there (all of which make good live fish food), and dilute leachate from the worm bin is applied to outdoor plants, with small amounts used as needed to boost tannin levels and fertilize the plants in the aquariums.

Along with straw, grasses, paper, and uneaten goodies from the rodent enclosure, the worm bin is also stocked with extra mealworms and their beetles. Mealworms provide part of the diet for our amphibians, fish, and rodents, and not only do they assist the earthworms with the breakdown of compost, but those in the composter also provide us with a second population of mealworms with which to cross-breed our main colony in order to prevent crashes. Despite the common origin of the two groups, it takes very few generations for their surroundings to change them sufficiently-enough that the genetic makeup of each is able to refresh that of the other.

When a level of our worm bin is fully digested, that compost (worms and all) is mixed with the larger compost pile, composed mostly of sawdust from the kitty litter boxes. That bigger pile is turned and mixed with yard ‘waste’ in the spring, and whatever part has finished its process is used as in any garden, albeit without most of the traditional garden plants and with an ever-changing organic rather than more rigid architectural-style design. I do have a lone garden rhubarb plant that’s been pluggin’ along for a few years now; I didn’t plant it and it’s never gone to seed, but I do tend it and we enjoy its stems each May and June. Next spring I’ll probably divide it for the first time to a few places around the property that it might enjoy being.

I take the same approach with our live fish-food buckets as with the mealworm populations. The buckets house snails, blackworms, daphnia, and plants, and every few weeks I move some worms and daphnia from one bucket to another to jump-start a new generation. Each bucket has its own deep sand bed, covered by a healthy layer of mulm extracted from the aquarium filters along with some moss and algae – some of each of these, mulm, moss, and algae, is also regularly added to the duckweed bins – and only a couple inches of water in order to allow penetration of oxygen in these non-aerated environments to the surface of the DSBs between daily partial water changes. Whenever I have leftover eggs or grind eggshells for addition to the aquariums, paludarium, mealworm box, rodent house, and duckweed bins, I add a pinch to each of these buckets as well.

Eggshells provide bio-available calcium when ingested, even for us humans, although the reaction of our digestive acids with the alkaline calcium carbonate in the shells can be uncomfortable if too much is eaten at a given time. Mealworms (or crickets, if one were to use them as live food) gut-loaded with eggshell pass that calcium on to whomever might eat them, and it contributes to strong and beautiful shells on snails (or mantles on slugs) and exoskeletons on shrimp. Once it’s passed through a digestive tract, that calcium is released in a form that can be taken up by plants. In an aquatic or semi-aquatic environment those plants contribute to the denitrification portion of the nitrogen cycle, and terrestrial plants are trimmed and harvested as edible parts come into season for us and any of our critters who will enjoy and benefit from them.

So, thus goes the circle of life on our little piece of Robie Creek. It’s time to leave you once again, but as always, thanks for sharing your time with us, and we’ll see ya next month. May your August be blessed and bountiful, and from Robie Creek to Owl Creek, take care, be safe, have fun!

With much love,

Peace & the Dudes Jaway

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